Hungry Hearts
go around in America. And the men run after the women, and not like in
Poland, the women running after the men."
Gewalt! What an excitement began to burn through the whole village when
they heard of Hanneh Hayyeh's luck!
The ticket agents from the ship companies seeing how Hanneh Hayyeh's
letter was working like yeast in the air for America, posted up big
signs by all the market fairs: "Go to America, the New World. Fifty
rubles a ticket."
"Fifty rubles! Only fifty rubles! And there waits your lover!"
cried my heart.
Oi weh! How I was hungering to go to America after that! By day and by
night I was tearing and turning over the earth, how to get to my lover
on the other side of the world.
"Nu, Zalmon?" said my mother, twisting my father around to what I
wanted. "It's not so far from sense what Sara Reisel is saying. In
Savel, without a dowry, she had no chance to get a man, and if we got
to wait much longer she will be too old to get one anywhere."
"But from where can we get together the fifty rubles?" asked my
father. "Why don't it will itself in you to give your daughter the
moon?"
I could no more think on how to get the money than they. But I was so
dying to go, I felt I could draw the money out from the sky.
One night I could not fall asleep. I lay in the darkness and stillness,
my wild, beating heart on fire with dreams of my lover. I put out my
hungry hands and prayed to my lover through the darkness: "Oh, love,
love! How can I get the fifty rubles to come to you?"
In the morning I got up like one choking for air. We were sitting down
to eat breakfast, but I couldn't taste nothing. I felt my head drop
into my hands from weakness.
"Why don't you try to eat something?" begged my mother, going
over to me.
"Eat?" I cried, jumping up like one mad. "How can I eat? How can
I sleep? How can I breathe in this deadness? I want to go to America. I
_must_ go, and I _will_ go!"
My mother began wringing her hands. "Oi weh! Mine heart! The knife
is on our neck. The landlord is hollering for the unpaid rent, and it
wills itself in you America?"
"Are you out of your head?" cried my father.
"What are you dreaming of golden hills on the sky? How can we get
together the fifty rubles for a ticket?"
I stole a look at Yosef, my younger brother. Nothing that was sensible
ever laid in his head to do; but if there was anything wild, up in
the air that willed itself in him, he could break through stone walls
to get it. Yosef gave a look around the house. Everything was old
and poor, and not a thing to get money on--nothing except father's
Saifer Torah--the Holy Scrolls--and mother's silver candlesticks, her
wedding present from our grandmother.
"Why not sell the Saifer Torah and the candlesticks?" said Yosef.
Nobody but my brother would have dared to breathe such a thing.
"What? A Jew sell the Saifer Torah or the Sabbath candlesticks?"
My father fixed on us his burning eyes like flaming wells. His hands
tightened over his heart. He couldn't speak. He just looked on the
Saifer Torah, and then on us with a look that burned like live coals on
our naked bodies. "What?" he gasped. "Should I sell my life, my
soul from generation and generation? Sell my Saifer Torah? Not if the
world goes under!"
There was a stillness of thunder about to break. Everybody heard
everybody's heart beating.
"Did I live to see this black day?" moaned my father, choking from
quick breathing. "Mine own son, mine Kadish--mine Kadish tells me to
sell the Holy Book that our forefathers shed rivers of blood to hand
down to us."
"What are you taking it so terrible?" said my brother. "Doesn't
it stand in the Talmud that to help marry his daughter a man may sell
the holiest thing--even the Holy Book?"
"_Are there miracles in America?_ Can she yet get there a man at her
age and without a dowry?"
"If Hanneh Hayyeh, who is older than Sara Reisel and not half as
good-looking," said my brother, "could get a boss from a factory,
then whom cannot Sara Reisel pick out? And with her luck all of us will
be lifted over to America."
My father did not answer. I waited, but still he did not answer.
At last I burst out with all the tears choking in me for years: "Is
your old Saifer Torah that hangs on the wall dearer to you than that I
should marry? The Talmud tells you to sell the holiest thing to help
marry your daughter, but you--you love yourself more than your own
child!"
Then I turned to my mother. I hit my hands on the table and cried in
a voice that made her tremble and grow frightened: "Maybe you love
your silver candlesticks more than your daughter's happiness? To
whom can I marry myself here, I ask you, only--to the bath janitor, to
the water-carrier? I tell you I'll kill myself if you don't help
me get away! I can't stand no more this deadness here. I must get
away. And you must give up everything to help me get away. All I need
is a chance. I can do a million times better than Hanneh Hayyeh. I got
a head. I got brains. I feel I can marry myself to the greatest man in
America."
My mother stopped crying, took up the candlesticks from the mantelpiece
and passed her hands over them. "It's like a piece from my
flesh," she said. "We grew up with this, you children and I, and my
mother and my mother's mother. This and the Saifer Torah are the only
things that shine up the house for the Sabbath."
She couldn't go on, her words choked in her so. I am seeing yet
how she looked, holding the candlesticks in her hands, and her eyes
that she turned on us. But then I didn't see anything but to go to
America.
She walked over to my father, who sat with his head in his hands,
stoned with sadness. "Zalmon!" she sobbed. "The blood from under
my nails I'll give away, only my child should have a chance to marry
herself well. I'll give away my candlesticks--"
Even my brother Yosef's eyes filled with tears, so he quick jumped
up and began to whistle and move around. "You don't have to sell
them," he cried, trying to make it light in the air. "You can pawn
them by Moisheh Itzek, the usurer, and as soon as Sara Reisel will get
herself married, she'll send us the money to get them out again, and
we'll yet live to take them over with us to America."
I never saw my father look so sad. He looked like a man from whom
the life is bleeding away. "I'll not stand myself against your
happiness," he said, in a still voice. "I only hope this will be to
your luck and that you'll get married quick, so we could take out the
Saifer Torah from the pawn."
In less than a week the Saifer Torah and the candlesticks were pawned
and the ticket bought. The whole village was ringing with the news that
I am going to America. When I walked in the street people pointed on me
with their fingers as if I were no more the same Sara Reisel.
Everybody asked me different questions.
"Tell me how it feels to go to America? Can you yet sleep nights like
other people?"
"When you'll marry yourself in America, will you yet remember
us?"
God from the world! That last Friday night before I went to
America! Maybe it is the last time we are together was in everybody's
eyes. Everything that happened seemed so different from all other
times. I felt I was getting ready to tear my life out from my body.
Without the Saifer Torah the house was dark and empty. The sun, the
sky, the whole heaven shined from that Holy Book on the wall, and
when it was taken out it left an aching emptiness on the heart, as if
something beautiful passed out of our lives.
I yet see before me my father in the Rabbi's cap, with eyes that look
far away into things; the way he sang the prayer over the wine when he
passed around the glass for every one to give a sip. The tears rolled
out from my little sister's eyes down her cheeks and fell into the
wine. On that my mother, who was all the time wiping her tears, burst
out crying. "Shah! Shah!" commanded my father, rising up from his
chair and beginning to walk around the room. "It's Sabbath night,
when every Jew should be happy. Is this the way you give honor to God
on His one day that He set aside for you?"
On the next day, that was Sabbath, father as if held us up in his
hands, and everybody behaved himself. A stranger coming in couldn't
see anything that was going on, except that we walked so still and each
one by himself, as if somebody dying was in the air over us.
On the going-away morning, everybody was around our house waiting
to take me to the station. Everybody wanted to give a help with the
bundles. The moving along to the station was like a funeral. Nobody
could hold in their feelings any longer. Everybody fell on my neck to
kiss me, as if it was my last day on earth.
"Remember you come from Jews. Remember to pray every day," said my
father, putting his hands over my head, like in blessing on the day of
Atonement.
"Only try that we should be together soon again," were the last
words from my mother as she wiped her eyes with the corner of her
shawl.
"Only don't forget that I want to study, and send for me as quick
as you marry yourself," said Yosef, smiling good-bye with tears in
his eyes.
As I saw the train coming, what wouldn't I have given to stay back
with the people in Savel forever! I wanted to cry out: "Take only
away my ticket! I don't want any more America! I don't want any
more my lover!"
But as soon as I got into the train, although my eyes were still
looking back to the left-behind faces, and my ears were yet hearing the
good-byes and the partings, the thoughts of America began stealing into
my heart. I was thinking how soon I'd have my lover and be rich like
Hanneh Hayyeh. And with my luck, everybody was going to be happy in
Savel. The dead people will stop dying and all the sorrows and troubles
of the world will be wiped away with my happiness.
I didn't see the day. I didn't see the night. I didn't see the
ocean. I didn't see the sky. I only saw my lover in America, coming
nearer and nearer to me, till I could feel his eyes bending on me so
near that I got frightened and began to tremble. My heart ached so with
the joy of his nearness that I quick drew back and turned away, and
began to talk to the people that were pushing and crowding themselves
on the deck.
Nu, I got to America.
Ten hours I pushed a machine in a shirt-waist factory, when I was
yet lucky to get work. And always my head was drying up with saving
and pinching and worrying to send home a little from the little I
earned. All that my face saw all day long was girls and machines--and
nothing else. And even when I came already home from work, I could
only talk to the girls in the working-girls' boarding-house, or shut
myself up in my dark, lonesome bedroom. No family, no friends, nobody
to get me acquainted with nobody! The only men I saw were what passed
me by in the street and in cars.
"Is this 'lovers' land'?" was calling in my heart. "Where
are my dreams that were so real to me in the old country?"
Often in the middle of the work I felt like stopping all the
machines and crying out to the world the heaviness that pressed on my
heart. Sometimes when I walked in the street I felt like going over to
the first man I met and cry out to him: "Oh, I'm so lonely! I'm
so lonely!"
One day I read in the Jewish "Tageblatt" the advertisement from
Zaretzky, the matchmaker. "What harm is it if I try my luck?"
I said to myself. "I can't die away an old maid. Too much love
burns in my heart to stand back like a stone and only see how other
people are happy. I want to tear myself out from my deadness. I'm in
a living grave. I've got to lift myself up. I have nobody to try for
me, and maybe the matchmaker will help."
As I walked up Delancey Street to Mr. Zaretzky, the street was